Any attempt to give even the merest outline of the history of the labor movement among the immigrant Jews in the United States would lead into a maze of unreliable figures, exaggerations, and conflicting statements, not only between opponents, but also among those most friendly to their cause. The Russian Jew, in America, like the Russian himself at home, has not yet learned to divorce trade unionism from politics; his labor organizations are either organized and managed by Socialistic agitators and politicians, and in the end split from within on account of the continuous wars among the adherents of various schools of Socialistic principles and tactics; or, if it is not Socialistic, and would not permit the machinery of its organization to be used for the benefit of the party――or, rather, of one of the Socialistic parties――it is opposed, and sometimes ruined, by open attacks or by neglect. And so it comes that as long as a labor union is typically Jewish, i. e., as long as it differs from the American trade union in its being much more political and being more interested in a general struggle against capital or against the present order of society, it leads a precarious existence. The small number of labor unions whose members are exclusively Jewish immigrants, which are strictly trade unions and permit their members to have their own political views or preferences, are usually affiliated with American central labor bodies, and belong to the history of the labor movement of the country rather than to one which deals with the Jews as a separate entity. But the radicalism of the laborer as such, and the radicalism of the union which he enters and upholds, is like the radicalism of the immigrant in general and like his dwelling in tenement houses: a passing phase which seems permanent because new arrivals take up the place of those who are continually dropping out from the ranks on account of their improved material and educational condition. Isaac A. Hourwich (b. in Wilna, 1860; a. 1892), the economist and statistician, in his attempt to review the labor movement among the Jews in this country, could do no better than to quote the following characterization from the pen of a recognized specialist on the subject: